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At IBC, IT Invades, Camera Bodies are Snatched

Sep 27, 2005 4:30 PM, D.W. Leitner

IT is short for information technology. A lot of people think it means Internet technology and these days, maybe it does. With Google inhaling entire research libraries and hungrily eyeing video titles next, what’s the difference?

Anyway, Internet technology, the backbone and nervous system of our digital global village, and its syntax, IP (Internet protocol), have for some time been extending tendril-like axons in the direction of digital video, and at September’s IBC in Amsterdam, several new camcorders appeared taken over by the IT invader, a life-form decidedly different from the oxide-based video recording that preceded it.

Panasonic, which sneak-peeked their Handycam-style HVX200 DVCPRO HD camcorder at NAB, showed a working version at IBC with real footage captured via flash memory P2 cards at 100 Mbps. No surprise that the tape, er, recall by flash memory, looked terrific.

But here’s a new sensation: select a picon (picture icon of first frame) of any captured clip in the flip-out LCD screen for immediate playback, and enjoy instant gratification heretofore associated with an iPod click wheel. No more pressing the return button, waiting for the tape to rewind several seconds, cue, roll forward, end, recue, return to record mode.

I can particularly envision eliminating those embarrassing recordings where, hoisting the camcorder around on location, I unknowingly tap the record button. There’s nothing like looking into the viewfinder to start a shot, only to discover the camcorder is already recording. With HVX200, nobody else needs to know this happened. With instant scene playback comes instant scene deletion.

(Jan Crittenden Livingston, DVCPRO Product Line Business Manager for Panasonic Broadcast, tells of a request from a New York NY1 cameraperson for the addition of a .wav file to mimic the sound of a tape drive threading up, so that the operator could hear when the camera was running. Panasonic’s HVX200 when recording to P2 chips, you see, is the world’s first 100% silent motion picture camera. Zero moving parts equals zero camera noise. An audio recordist’s dream machine, not to mention the only on-board mic that fails to deliver camera hum.)

Did I mention instant start-up? Flash memory is alert, nimble, always at the ready. No tape path to engage, drives to spin up to speed. I’m particularly envious of the HVX200’s instant-start advantage in light of the excessive start-of-record delays of several recent HDV camcorders, which in a documentary environment can cause forfeiture of key moments. (It’s happened to me.)

What’s this got to do with IT? The HVX200’s scene capture is file-based. MXF wrappers attach metadata to each scene. Asset management software permits instant playback, scene marking and deletion, not to mention fast file transfers.

Then there’s P2, the ultimate in RAID-based solid-state storage. Jan Crittenden Livingston also tells a story from last April’s NAB, in which Panasonic, Telestream, and others partnered with Microsoft to demonstrate Microsoft’s Connected Services Framework (which won one of sister magazine Millimeter’s NAB 2005 Pick Hit Awards). Said an admiring Microsoft representative of P2, in selecting Panasonic to partner with: “It’s not IT-compatible, it is IT.”

If digital camcorders have become image computers, the HVX200 is a fast, compact laptop.

At IBC, aggressive IT also invaded upcoming camcorder products from Sony and Grass Valley.

Sony’s compact XDCAM HD—which incorporates Professional Disc (Sony's implementation of Blu-ray recording), IEEE-1394 (originally Apple Computer’s high-speed bus for peripherals), a choice of 18 Mbps variable, 25 Mbps HDV, or 35 Mbps variable MPEG-2 compression with thumbnails, MPEG-4 proxies, and IP addresses for networking and remote streaming—will next year upon actual field use bring to HD acquisition unprecedented file management and IT integration.

And Grass Valley’s announcement of an upcoming “Infinity” family of file-based, media-free devices for acquisition, recording, and storage further sets the stage for an era of IT-based file capture that may supplant the present era of tape-based digital video recording.

GV, which has no investment in media manufacture of any sort, plans to debut a tapeless $20K HD/SD Infinity Digital Media Camcorder in 2006 (at NAB?), featuring acquisition by means of off-the-shelf storage like Compact Flash and Iomega’s new REV removable hard disk. (GV has collaborated with Iomega to create a REV PRO version for video professionals.) If those won’t do, I/O choices include SDI, HD-SDI, composite analog I/O, FireWire (IEEE-1394), three USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI for digital display.

The idea is: any acquisition strategy you want. Your choice, not the manufacturer’s.

Infinity’s choices don’t end there. A 2/3” 3-CCD camcorder with what GV describes as a “built-in PDA-type user interface,” Infinity will at first offer 1080i/50/60, 720p/50/60, 625i/50, 525i/60 and later, per GV, 720p24/25/30 and 1080p24/25/30.

Oh--to quote Steve Jobs--there’s one more thing! User selectability of three dissimilar codecs, DV, MPEG-2, and JPEG2000.

• DV 25 Mbps, including 4:1:1 and 4:2:0 for compatibility with all flavors of SD DV: NTSC, PAL, DVCAM, DVCPRO.

• MPEG-2, I-frame and long-GOP. 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 for SD, 4:2:0 for HD.

• JPEG2000, 75 Mbps. 4:2:2, 10 bit for SD, 4:2:2, 10 bit for HD.

Wavelet-based JPEG2000 is the compression recently selected by Hollywood’s Digital Cinema Initiative for future commercial theatrical distribution. Drop-outs appear out of focus instead of macro-blocky.

Too many permutations in one camcorder? An Infinity of choices? Perhaps they should have named this one KnownUniverseCam.

In other words, the IT invasion is spreading fast.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.